Milky Way

Mine! Mine! ALL MINE!

July 2, 2025Richard Wright& Travel, Astrophotography, Trips

I don’t do a lot of selfies, but I made an exception at the recent Grand Canyon Star Party. The Milky Way there is bar none the best I’ve seen naked eye, or photographically. It’s a dark sky park certified by the IDA (International Dark-Sky Association), and at the South Rim we are at an altitude of about 7,000 feet where the air is thin, and you feel like you are walking among the stars at night. The dark lanes are ghostly and ethereal, as is the glow of billions of tiny stars, each of which alone is invisible, but together they sing a heavenly chorus that has been heard by countless generations of mankind in every culture on Earth.

Man in front of the Milky Way — My selfie in front of the Milky Way at the Grand Canyon

For this “selfie”, I set up my Canon EOS Ra on a tripod with a remote release. I set it for 10 seconds, at ISO 800, with a 35mm Tamron f/1.4 lens wide open. A friend pushed the button once I had climbed a rock at Mather Point and spread out my arms to heaven. That night, the Milky Way was MINE. It can be yours too! You just need a dark sky, and maybe a small rock to stand on to get just a little closer 😉

Grand Canyon Star Party

July 30, 2022Richard WrightAstrophotography

It’s been over two years since I (or most people) have attended a public star party. In June I returned to one of my newer annual favorites, the Grand Canyon Star Party. I’ve attended both North and South Rim events, but this year I spent at a week at the south rim event doing public outreach each night, and sneaking in some astrophotography on the side. Conditions for deep sky work here are not optimal because of the lunar phase (the Moon comes up not long after midnight), but it is a glorious opportunity for nightscape work.

My Sigma 20mm f/1.4 performed as well as always, but I tried a new lens this year, the Tamron 35mm f/1.4. I was amazed by its performance. Not only was it sharp and fast, but even wide open, it was dramatically better than the Sigma lens at the same f-stop. I took some snapshots with it, but it really performed on a tracking platform (I used a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer AZ-GTI) with a 20 second exposure. I actually meant to do a full 30 seconds (the maximum exposure without an intervalometer on my Canon EOS Ra), but my fat fingers, the cold, and distracting wind… well, I got what I got! Tell me, does it not look like a giant crab monster in the sky? Or is it just me.

Milky Way Core Image — The core of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Several reddish emission nebula are prominently displayed along ethereal fingers of dusty dark nebula.

Cosmic Tourists

February 10, 2019Richard Wright& Travel, Astrophotography, Trips

This year the Winter Star Party returned to the Florida Keys after having to relocate for a year due to the extensive damage wrought by Hurricane Irma. We could not have been treated better by the weather, and there’s going to be several additions to my gallery from this years photography and imaging. This is my favorite image from the trip, and I think possibly my favorite nightscape I’ve ever taken. I also won first place in the wide field imaging contest with this shot. Just before dawn, I knew the Summer Milky Way would be making an appearance and I wanted to catch it behind a row of telescopes setup for the star party. While scoping out (ha, see what I did there) locations, I saw two other people shooting possibly Venus and Jupiter being reflected in the water. I knew I had the perfect shot that captured the essence of the Winter Star Party! Two star gazers enjoying the view in tourist central (the Florida Keys). Truly, we are all here as cosmic tourists.

Richard
Canon 5D Mark III
10 seconds @ISO 3200
Sigma 20mm art lens f/1.4